Failure of the Day: Respiration

I shouldn't complain (yeah, right); I hardly ever get sick anymore since I stopped having to leave my house for work. I haven't had so much as a cold since the month before my wedding, some 18 months ago. And after 35 years as a twice-a-year flu/bronchitis/strep girl, a year and a half is pretty damn impressive.

I knew it couldn't last forever: sooner or later I'd catch something. At first I though it was allergies since Sunday was a day-long game of Dodge the Dander. I did a pretty good job of avoiding Chris's sister's cats and I felt fine all day. And when, on Sunday night, my throat was scratchy, I figured I got off easy. A little bit of coughing beats the hell out of a nebulizer and Benedryl drip in the ER, which is how these adventures with kitties turn out a little too often.

But I got steadily worse yesterday and by last night, it was pretty clear that I've got a bug of some sort. Also not much of a surprise I guess because avoiding the cats on Sunday entailed hanging out in the backyard with a ton of kids under10, those sticky little germ factories.

Now, what would you do under the circumstances? Dry cough, tightness in the chest, low-grade fever…look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn't be looking up the latest SARS info online. You would! You know you would! And I do in fact, have all the symptoms. Everyone who has any kind of cold or flu has all the symptoms. But it's also a fact that no one could muster up very much surprise upon hearing that I had a new disease. Doesn't it just seem like something that would happen to me?

I don't actually think I have SARS. It's just some bullshit tot-borne infection. And the only thing really crappy about it is that it seriously interferes with my ability to smoke, and I've got less than 6 months left in which to get all that delicious nicotine into me, and that's what really sucks.